A day before Holi celebrations, the Opposition Congress in Assam suffered yet another setback. Veteran leader and legislator from the Naoboicha seat, Bharat Chandra Narah, put in his papers, writing a one-line resignation letter addressed to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

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Congress, which is part of a 16-party United Opposition Forum in the state, is putting up candidates in 13 of the total 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam and will be supporting Assam Jatiya Parishad president Lurinjyoti Gogoi in the Dibrugarh seat. On Sunday, the party named Uday Shankar Hazarika, a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who had joined the grand old party a few months ago, as its candidate from Lakhimpur. Narah submitted his resignation to Kharge within hours of that announcement.

Both Narah and his wife Ranee have been prominent faces of the Congress in Assam for decades. Since 1985, Narah has been elected six times to the state assembly, four times as a Congress candidate and once each as an Independent and as an Asom Gana Parishad candidate. On the other hand, Ranee has represented Lakhimpur thrice in Lok Sabha since 1998 and served one term in the Rajya Sabha.

Narah’s resignation is yet to be accepted by the Congress, but it is another addition to the list of leaders and elected representatives from Assam who have quit the party and moved to the ruling BJP camp since the last assembly polls in the state held in 2021.

Congress had won 29 seats (of 126) in the assembly polls held in 2021. But within months the number got reduced to 27 after two of its legislators resigned from the party and joined the BJP. They later won from the same seats on BJP tickets.

Last month, Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, who represents the North Karimganj seat from Congress and was a working president of the party, quit and extended support to the BJP government. Another Congress MLA, Basanta Kumar Das, had also extended support to the ruling government the same day. With this the number of Congress MLAs supporting the BJP government, without quitting their own party, increased to three.

Within days of that development, another working president of Congress in Assam, Rana Goswami, a two-time former MLA from Jorhat, joined the saffron party at a ceremony held at the state BJP head office in Guwahati.

Along with leaders, workers from the Congress have been deserting it. On Monday, Assam parliamentary affairs minister Pijush Hazarika claimed that around 10,000 workers from the grand old party have joined the saffron party in the past week.

“These are baseless claims made by the BJP minister. We challenge him to back it up with data. Not even 1000 Congress workers have left the party recently. Once a leader leaves a party, such a movement of supporters of that particular leader leaving the party and joining another is seen ahead of polls. But many of them return to the Congress fold after polls,” said Bedabrata Bora, vice-chairman of Assam Congress’s media department.

Since 2014, BJP has been expanding its reach across Assam, mainly at the cost of Congress. The party won 7 of the 14 seats in 2014 while Congress bagged 3. In 2016, BJP overthrew the Congress and came to power in the state for the first time. The saffron party retained power in 2021. In the last Lok Sabha polls held in 2019, BJP increased its tally to 9 seats, while Congress remained at 3.

Significantly, though Congress has lost some of its leaders in the state, the party’s support base among voters has grown substantially in the past 10 years. In 2014, BJP secured 36.86% of the total votes while Congress got 29.90%. Five years later, BJP cornered 36.41% of the total votes and Congress was close behind with 35.79%.

It is worth mentioning that shifting of loyalties by leaders from Congress isn’t a new phenomenon in Assam. In 2015, Himanta Biswa Sarma, then the second most powerful minister in the Congress government led by Tarun Gogoi, joined the BJP. Within months, 9 Congress MLAs loyal to Sarma also switched sides.

While most of them got elected on BJP tickets in the 2016 assembly polls, two of them Pallab Lochan Das (Tezpur) and Pradan Baruah (Lakhimpur) got the saffron party tickets in 2019 Lok Sabha polls and won their seats. Baruah will contest from Lakhimpur again this time on a BJP ticket and another new entrant to the party from the Congress camp, Suresh Bora, will be the saffron party’s candidate from the Nagaon seat.

On Monday, Sarma stated that Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah will also join the saffron camp in January next year.

“Bhupen Borah will join Congress in January next year. I have already kept two assembly seats ready for him to contest from in the 2026 assembly polls,” Sarma said

“These are mind games being played by CM Sarma. Whenever we ask him questions on the state government’s failures, he mocks opposition leaders and comments that we will join the BJP. If Congress leadership allows me, I will contest against Sarma in the 2026 polls,” Borah replied on Tuesday.